Mackinnons #02 For All the Right Reasons (53 page)

It got to be a joke after that, for every time Katherine was falling back into her old stubbornness, Fanny would say: “Katherine, you’re freezing your arse.”

In spite of Fanny’s reminders, there just didn’t seem to be much joy left in her life. “Bitter fruit,” is what she likened it to.

As always, Fanny had a response for that one too. “That’s easily fixed. It’s nothing more than a matter of maturing. All fruit is bitter before it turns ripe,” she said.

Speaking of fruit, one afternoon, Katherine was out in the orchard gathering freestone peaches when Clarabelle Dudley walked up. Katherine had seen her coming, wandering through the burdened trees, closing in on her like a sidewinder tracking supper. It was, to Katherine, sort of a predetermined, yet enraptured voyage, where Clarabelle walked a course of solid resolution but checked every bit of fruit she passed along the way, going so far as to drop a few peaches that passed inspection into the basket on her arm.

“I’ve been hearing some astonishing things about you in town,” Clarabelle said, ducking under a low branch and coming to stand in back of Katherine who was three rungs up on a ladder.

Katherine kept on picking peaches and dropping them into the large pockets of her apron. “What kind of things?” she asked.

“Of course, I don’t suppose I am any more astonished than you
are
, being a married woman and having to live out here and make do without a man about.”

Katherine paused and turned halfway around. “Why should that astonish either one of us? I’ve been making do without a man for most of my life.”

“Well, of course you have, but now that you’re married folks just naturally assumed you’d be living with your husband.”

“My husband is a busy man and a lumber camp is no place for a woman.”

“It’s too bad you didn’t know that before you went all the way out there and then had to come all the way back.”

“I’m glad I went. And I’m glad I’m back.”

Reading the irritation in Katherine’s voice, Clarabelle frowned “I must say you’ve taken on quite a big responsibility. I’ve never seen so many fields under cultivation…not even when your pa was alive. Folks were saying in town the other day that it was a big undertaking even for a large family, and here you are just two women and a hired hand. Of course, I’m not trying to discourage you any.”

“That’s good, because you’re not,” was Katherine’s dry reply. “I wanted to see what this old farm could do and I’m doing just that. We’ve had a good, prosperous year. The land has been good to us.” Katherine climbed down from the ladder and began pulling the peaches out of her pockets and putting them into the crate. Then she looked square at Clarabelle. “What brings you out here on a hot day like this?” she asked. “Were you appointed by the Ladies Sewing Circle to come out here and research a few topics for your next discussion?”

Clarabelle made a pathetic attempt to laugh. “No, of course not. I just stopped by for a friendly visit. I was on my way to visit my late husband’s aunt. She lives in the old Mabry place.”

“That’s interesting, since you passed the road to the old Mabry place a couple of miles back,” Katherine said.

Clarabelle tried to look surprised and missed. “Fancy that,” she said. “In that case, I suppose I’d best be heading back the way I came.” She turned and made her way toward her buggy.

Katherine couldn’t resist calling after her. “Enjoy the peaches,” she said, but if Clarabelle heard, she didn’t let on.

Katherine moved the ladder over to another tree and began picking peaches, just as she had been before. Once again, she had just climbed to the third step when she heard someone come up behind her. Clarabelle was fast making herself a pest.
What could she possibly want this time. More peaches?

Without turning around, Katherine said, “Did you lose something?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did,” said a deep, masculine voice. “My wife.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

A lot of men in the world might be missing a wife.

But there was only one person in the whole world who had a voice like that,
it can’t be.
The branches overhead began to grow fuzzy and blurred, the sky overhead started to whirl. Dizziness gripped her and she reached for a branch to steady herself, misjudged the distance and missed, losing her balance. His arms were around her before she fell and she felt herself lifted. She raised her head and looked into the bluest eyes this side of paradise. “They say,” she said weakly, “that a man surprised is half beaten. Do you suppose that applies to women as well?”

“God, I hope so,” Alex said.

Alex.
Dear, beloved Alex.
The feel of his arms, the sight of his beloved face. She felt like weeping. She wanted to die laughing. She wanted to kiss him for coming. She wanted to shake him for taking so long. She wanted to beat him over the head with her bucket, just for the heck of it. The sound of his voice washed over her, strong and uplifting. The sight of him was something she never expected to see again, the smile on his face touching her like a blessing. She wanted to bury her face against his neck, wanted to tell him all the things that were in her heart, how much she had missed him, how sorry she was she left, how she was ready to forgive him, but the words froze in her throat and she wanted to scream from the agony of it. She didn’t want it to be this way. She wanted there to be no past, no mistakes, no deception, no foolish pride. There was only Alex, here, where she had so often wished him, and herself, still frozen in misery and unwilling to forgive.

“Well,” he said, giving her a slow smile, “here I was, missing a wife, and now one has dropped into my arms. I had no idea wives were so plentiful in these parts that they were falling out of trees. I should have come sooner.”

She felt the constriction in her throat. She was still so stunned, all she could say was, “Put me down.”

The humor in his eyes dimmed and then brightened. She knew what it cost him to force it now. “I come halfway around the world to see you and you tell me to put you down?”

“That’s no more than I did,” she said. “I went halfway around the world to get away from you. Besides, what should I have said? Drop me?”

He laughed.

She wasn’t softened one bit. “You shouldn’t have come,” she said, wiggling and trying to get free. “Will you put me down?”

“Only if you promise not to run away again,” he said, giving her a soft look. “Why did you leave me, lass?”

Lass. Oh Alex, why did you have to say it that way?
“I thought it would be best. I’ve never fancied myself staying where I wasn’t wanted.”

“You were always wanted. You just didn’t know it.”

“Neither did you, apparently.” She drew back her head and looked at him thoughtfully. “Why are you here?”

“To show you what it can be like between us, to teach you how easy it is to forgive, even when you think you can’t.”

She struggled again, and he lowered her to her feet, watching her back away from him and then look at him like he was a stranger, waiting.

Everything around her had grown strangely quiet. All around her she could hear the locusts buzzing. The sun overhead was still shining and very bright, a shaft of it slanting through the trees, making a rectangle on the orchard floor for Alex to stand in. And that was all he was doing, just standing there, looking at her in much the same shocked way she was looking at him. For a while, that was all she wanted to do. It had been so long since she had seen him, so long since she had felt a part of something. For a long time she had felt alone, as if the very world had found her lacking and retreated, pulling back to observe her from a distance. She realized that she hadn’t really wanted to feel accepted, that in some small way she had still wanted to cling to her pain, withdrawing to herself, as if the pain alone could keep the memory of Alex alive. But he was here, standing just a few feet from her.

Alex looked at her, remembering that morning over a year ago, when he had gone to her room and found nothing save a short, terse note. His first reaction had been to get rip-roaring drunk and stay that way for a week. Who knows? If Adrian hadn’t found him and locked him up, he might still be drunk. When he sobered up, Alex found he was thinking straighter than he had in years. He hadn’t been really and truly happy even before Katherine came to California and that, he knew now, was because he had never wanted to be a lumber baron in the first place. He had never wanted anything more than to farm and raise cattle and children on the best-looking spread in Texas money could buy. That was the reason he’d gone to the gold fields in the first place.

That wasn’t the end of his surprises. When he’d told Adrian of his desire to go back to Texas, Adrian said, “I think that’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“You do? Why?”

“Maybe it’s because I’m tired of looking at your long face. Maybe I’m sick of fighting with you all the time.” He grinned. “Or maybe it’s because I want to do business with Victoria Talbot and you keep getting in the way.”

Alex shook his head. “What are you trying to do? Buy out the competition?”

“You might call it that.” Adrian laughed. “Hell’s bells, man. You’re my brother. Why wouldn’t I want to see you happy?”

“There have been a lot of times in the past when you went out of your way to keep that fact well hidden,” Alex said sourly, but Adrian was in a cheerful mood and merely clapped his brother on the back and suggested they go have themselves a drink.

They agreed on a price and Adrian bought Alex’s share. It had taken time to get the ownership transferred and Alex’s money in the San Francisco bank, but the minute it was done, he was ready to go after Katherine—on bended knees if that’s what it took. Perhaps it had all worked out for the best. If Katherine hadn’t found out, she would have never left him, and if she hadn’t left, they would in all likelihood have spent the rest of their lives chopping wood instead of planting seeds.

Looking at Katherine now, he had trouble remembering anything except a desire to put things right between them, for what they had been robbed of could never be regained. Knowing he didn’t want to get all bogged down in the past, he concentrated on the here and now.
First things first, and all that
, he reminded himself. “Katherine…” He took a step toward her and she almost turned away.

She almost turned away—but she didn’t. She didn’t know why. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words he wanted to hear, words that would heal, but neither could she lash out at him and send him on his way. He had come for her and that said a great deal. The thought that he might really care for her was too new, too fresh to deal with now. She shook her head. “Let’s don’t talk anymore. We’ve both said too many things in the past, things that have hurt and left scars. You’re back. That’s as much as I can handle right now.”

Alex was silent for such a long time she wondered if he had suddenly lost his voice. But then he lifted his head to look at her, seeing her bare feet, the leaves and twigs in her hair, smelling the bloom of ripe peaches that clung to her skin. His hand trembled as it came up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I suppose you’re right,” he said with a weak laugh. “To tell the truth, I don’t think I have the stamina to say anything either, at least not right now.”

He looked off for a long moment, as if he was putting things right in his mind, then he turned and looked at her with a soft look. She was afraid of the feelings he touched within her. They stood for a long moment, unspeaking, unmoving. A silent plea so strong she wasn’t sure if it was his thoughts she was reading or her own. For a moment they weren’t two adults lashing out at each other with harsh words that were meant for pain. For a flicker of time the years fell away and they were standing again in the pasture where Katherine found the dead fawn and he had come to her, feeling her despair, giving her his strength and understanding. Dear God, she wanted it to be that way again. As if knowing her thoughts he lifted his hand to lay it gently along the hollow of her cheek. “This is the place,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

For a moment she didn’t understand what he was asking, but then it stirred within her, a half-remembered breeze that carried the sound of her mother’s voice, the words she whispered whenever she touched the curve of Katherine’s cheek where Alex was touching it now. “The place,” Katherine whispered, remembering. “Where obstinance makes it curve.”

He smiled. “Strange that I should remember that now.”

“Yes,” she said. “Strange that you remembered something my mother said a long time ago. Something I forgot.”

His face was a place of hollowed-out sadness that wrenched her heart. “That’s what being married is, isn’t it? One carrying on when the other is unable, one being strong where the other is weak, one remembering what the other can’t?” He turned away, pausing just long enough to look back at her and say, “I’ll be back.”

She watched him go, the trees closing behind him, one by one, to cloak him like stretching fingers of fog. He was going. But he would return. She felt a deep aching sadness inside her, afraid he had come back too soon, that he had returned before she had suffered and grown enough, before time had a chance to turn her bitter fruit sweet.

Alex took up residence in the old Mackinnon place across the creek. He had been there a little over a week, keeping himself busy and dropping in on Katherine and Fanny enough to “wear out his welcome”, but he didn’t. It was one afternoon, the second week in August, when he rode over to Katherine’s house. He found her in the back yard, winding the thorny branches of a climbing rose in a trellis she had just whitewashed. The heat and the close proximity of Alex had her in a dandy mood. It didn’t take Alex long to find that out.

“Don’t tell me you’re back already,” she said sourly.

“Okay,” he said in good humor, “I’m not back.”

“Good, then I can go on about my rat killing and not have to pretend you aren’t here.”

“Is that me same as ignoring me?”

Katherine looked at him through narrowed eyes and then snipped off a dead bloom in a manner that made him feel it could have just as easily been his neck. “It is,” she said.